The present invention relates to a printer comprising a printing unit for printing on a receiving medium of a predetermined type, a plurality of feeders for holding receiving media, and means for establishing the type of receiving medium held by each of the feeders.
The present invention furthermore relates to a method for printing a receiving medium of a predetermined type using a printer having a printing unit and a plurality of feeders for holding the receiving media, the method including the establishment of the type of receiving medium to be held by each of the said feeders.
The printer, which is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,885,613 includes a plurality of feeders with the same receiving medium in the form of a roll or sheets wherein the feeder is selected from the largest amount of recording medium remaining therein. In such a printer, a nearly empty feeder will only be fully emptied if the other feeders holding the same type of receiving medium have been also emptied. Thus, a printer will almost never contain an empty feeder in which another type of receiving medium, for example receiving sheets having another format, another color or another thickness can be inserted. The feeders will be used successively since after using one feeder, the amount of receiving sheets remaining therein will be less than the amount of receiving sheets in another feeder so that said other feeder with the larger amount of receiving sheets will be selected by the control unit. For example, in the case where there are four feeders containing the same type of receiving sheets, all four feeders will be used successively and become empty at almost the same moment. At that moment the operator needs to replenish all feeders at the same time. By using the feeders successively, many feeder changes, involving relatively elaborate operator handling, will occur.